


Little Lion Man

by yulbos



Series: If you want to be a lion, you must train with lions [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, but not really explored or described, implied Ron/Hermione/Harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yulbos/pseuds/yulbos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of oneshots exploring the relationships between Ron Weasley and the members of his immediate family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Breakable

May/August 1998

.

Molly Weasley knew that her youngest son was broken.

-xoxo-

She saw it in the way that he flinched away from human contact unless it came from Harry and Hermione, or he could see it coming. It had almost completely destroyed her to see him go rigid when hugged by what was left of her family around Fred's… well, around Fred, and to realise that he was so out of touch with interacting with other people that he completely clammed up if so much as a finger was placed on him without his say so. She didn't miss, and was both silently relieved and jealous, that he was fully relaxed around Harry and Hermione; that after Voldemort was dead and the world had started turning again, that Ron and Hermione were immediately in the black-haired boy's arms and so unbelievably happy to be with each other and alive, she'd had to turn away.

Ron wasn't the only one, of course, that shied away from physical contact; his two best friends' were equally skittish around others, but Harry had always been slightly wary when approached by anyone other than those two or Sirius, and Hermione had never been particularly open with affection. But Ron was her baby boy; the one who used to hang onto her apron strings until given a cuddle and who couldn't go to sleep without a bedtime story and a kiss. Molly wasn't sure how she'd missed her baby becoming a man, but she did, and she wasn't sure she liked it.

-xoxo-

She saw it when she realised how her son wouldn't fully relax until the other members of the 'Golden Trio' (a nickname she used to think was ridiculous, but now, she's not so sure it's wrong) were in the room where he could see them. She knows she's not the only one who noticed how close the three of them sat to each other, nor how they kept touching each other, as if to reassure themselves that they were actually there and okay. Bill told her how Ron had got separated from them for a while, although the details were sketchy at best and none of them were talking, which partly explained the touching, and whenever it happened she couldn't help but wonder what exactly they'd been through in those ten months that made them so scared of being out of each other's sight for more than five minutes.

It wasn't just in wakefulness that her son centred himself around the two non-Weasleys, and vice-versa. It hadn't escaped any of the family's attention that they took shifts in sleeping, and 'guarded' each other whilst doing it. Molly would have found the idea ludicrous, had she not been witness to Ron's wand mere inches away from Ginny's face and a dangerous hex on his lips when she'd come too close to a sleeping Harry. He hadn't even been apologetic about it; had only shrugged his shoulders and refused to lower his wand until his sister had backed off to stand a few feet away.

-xoxo-

The most obvious sign had been how shockingly little her son had eaten. Growing up, Ron had eaten anything and everything placed in front of him. It became abundantly clear on the night after the Battle, when even Molly herself had been operating on autopilot and could barely bring herself to put one foot in front of the other, that something was very wrong with her youngest boy. He had sat opposite her at the Gryffindor table, his eyes red and puffy from crying, his face so covered in blood and grime, she could scarcely see the skin underneath and could smell him, them, from across the table; a mixture of blood, sweat and smoke, amongst others that she couldn't place. He'd had Hermione's head on one shoulder and Harry's arm around his waist. A position she had gathered that meant they could both be touching (something they clearly needed, so she hadn't said anything) and eat without trouble. Not that they need have bothered; Ron had eaten less than a third of what was on his plate, and even that had looked like a struggle.

It had taken weeks to build up even half of the appetite he had had before they'd run off doing Merlin knew what. Even now, three months later, there are still days where they're all sat down to eat and she'll offer him something and he'll pale drastically, his chair shooting backwards so quickly it almost topples over, and disappear out through the back door or upstairs, the other two close behind him looking equally ill. There are also times where his face visibly lights up, he declares that she's the best cook on the planet, and she'll think that maybe he's getting better, before he shoots an apologetic look in Hermione's direction, his appetite vanishing faster than she can say 'Scourgify', and they're back at square one.

-xoxo-

When they'd got home to The Burrow, and the grief of Fred's death had dimmed from a constant, almost physical thing to a never-ending, but somewhat manageable ache in the back of the head, Molly noticed pretty quickly yet one more thing that was wrong with her child. Before Hogwarts, Ron had always been a very vocal person; he shouted when he was angry or excited, he laughed loudly when he was happy and he rambled when he was nervous. Over the years, that had obviously changed and he'd become more subdued and contemplative about things, which was probably to be expected given the things he'd been doing since the age of eleven, most of which both Molly and Arthur agreed he had kept hidden from them. This had only escalated on their return to their house. Ron only spoke in length to Harry and Hermione and he didn't even try to hide the fact that if anyone else approached them in the middle of a conversation it would stop until they left again. He only spoke when spoken too, and even then it had to be done quietly; none of them reacted well to loud or sudden noises and they never laughed, not in the way that they used to; carefree and happy.

-xoxo-

There were then, of course, the nightmares. Where her son and his friends kept quiet during the daytime, at night it was a very different story. In fact, the three of them had been plagued by nightmares for weeks, months really, that were so bad even the silencing charms placed over Ron's room were not enough to completely block out the screams. The first time she had witnessed one of their night terrors, which they were, if the sounds were anything to go by, it had been Hermione, who was still in Ginny's room at that point, who had woken the entire house with a soul-shattering scream. By the time the two boys had come hurtling down the stairs from the attic, neither one in more than a pair of boxers and the shorter of the two without his glasses, every Weasley had been gathered on the landing, not knowing what to do and Charlie had been the one to catch Ginny as she came stumbling out of the room, wide-eyed and terrified. When prompted to say what had happened, the redhead had simply shook her head and stared through the open door at the three friends.

Hermione had been laying ramrod straight on her back, her fists clutching the sheets around her so tightly her knuckles had turned white. All six of them had silently watched as Harry and Ron had laid on either side of her on top of the covers. The young witch had immediately curled into the taller male's chest; her head nestled under his chin and her hand on his shoulder. Despite the circumstances, the position had made Molly smile to herself; it had been no secret to her that the pair had fancied each other for quite some time. What had made her eyebrows near her hairline, however, had been Hermione reaching behind her to grab Harry's arm and pull it around her midriff tightly, without hesitation, his forehead resting against her shoulder blade and his thumb drawing soothing circles into her belly, Ron's fingers doing the same to her spine, both of them whispering words of comfort to the distraught girl.

It had been at that point that she had ushered all of the others back to bed, trying to give them some privacy, with Ginny standing at her shoulder, unsure of what to do next. That decision had been made for her a few minutes later when the three of them had exited the room, Hermione still between the two boys, looking pale and shaky, her head on Ron's shoulder and her hand gripping Harry's hip hard enough to leave a bruise, her eyes screwed shut and sweat beading her forehead. As they'd headed towards the stairs, Ron had given his mother a reassuring nod. Not that she had seen it; she'd been too focussed on the fact that she could see two pairs of ribs and six collarbones more than she should've been able to and skin so pale it was virtually translucent. She'd suddenly been struck with the fact that all three of them were broken in ways she didn't even know how to begin fixing, and for someone who spent so much time concentrated on the well-being and happiness of her family, it had been a bitter pill to swallow.

It had been a drastic and upsetting realisation; that her baby was breakable and that he'd been pushed over the edge to a place where it would take a lot of time and dedication to put the pieces that were once Ronald Weasley back together into some semblance of whole. But as she watched him one day in late August, pulling a face at Teddy over Harry's shoulder, making the young child gurgle happily, and then lifting his head enough to offer her a small smile, she couldn't help but think that her broken boy, broken children, really, had always been good at defying the odds. Limits simply didn't exist to them, and maybe that meant that things would eventually be okay. Either way, she'd be there to help him, because that's what mothers did.


	2. Dust

March 1999

.

Of all the places he would have expected his youngest son to announce he and his friends were moving into, number twelve, Grimmauld Place would not have been it. But when Ron had made the declaration over Sunday lunch, one day in late February, the words had left his lips accompanied with a grin. Molly had objected, of course; demanding to know who was going to take care of them if she wasn't there to do it.

"We can look after ourselves!" Ron had replied hotly, a scowl beginning to form on his face. "It's not like we haven't done it before."

"Not judging by the state you three were in when you first came home, you can't." Molly'd returned sharply, seemingly not realising she had taken it a step too far, and Arthur watched as Harry had placed a reassuring hand on Ron's left forearm, their eyes meeting briefly, and yet saying a thousand things that only the two of them would ever fully understand.

"Yeah, well, you try living on the run for almost a year, and see how you like it!" What Harry, Ron and Hermione had gone through in those ten months was never spoken about, all three of them keeping very tight-lipped about it. Bill had told his parents that Ron had got separated for a while (why, they didn't know; yet another thing on a long list of many, that hadn't been shared with them) and that the three of them, Ollivander, Luna Lovegood, Dean Thomas and a goblin called Griphook had stayed at his house for a short while before the Battle. It was such a shock to be given a piece of information like that that Arthur hadn't even reprimanded his son on his behaviour towards his mother. The way he'd said it had sounded like Ron and the others hadn't been nearly as safe as they'd been allowed to think.

This revelation meant that the rest of the meal had passed in awkward silence, no one at the table wanting to attempt a conversation, although Arthur hadn't missed Bill and Charlie flicking peas at each other when they'd thought Molly couldn't see them, the disapproving frown she gave them suggesting otherwise.

No more had been said about it that night, or the days following it, but they'd all seen the determined look in their mother's eye that seemed to promise trouble if the subject was brought up again. What hadn't been so obvious, but was still very much present, had been Ron's own determination, hidden by glares directed at Molly's back when she made a point of saying something about 'being close to the family, where I can keep an eye on you' and kept locked behind closed doors, the three of them slowly packing up their things, using Hermione's spellwork to shrink certain objects and sneak them out of the house.

-xoxo-

Ron had told him a few weeks before they left what they were going to do; that they were going to leave whether Molly agreed with it or not and they felt at least one of his parents' should know what they were planning. Arthur had been about to say that he agreed with his wife, the situation feeling far too similar to Bill's wedding and their sudden departure and he understood where Molly was coming from completely. The war may have been over, but it was still evident everywhere they went, there was no escaping the lasting effects, whether they be visible or not, and Arthur had no desire to relive the fear he'd felt when the trio had first gone missing, however ridiculous it may seem to his son; until he had children of his own, he wouldn't understand. But Ron, as if sensing his father's disapproval, had explained why they needed to leave as best he could; despite the leaps and bounds he'd made in expressing himself, the young man still had a long way to go.

"Dad, we need to go. We came back here because it was what you and Mum needed. Everything was screwed up and you needed us to be here so you could get better – don't look at me like that, you needed it as much as Mum did. But you're okay now and we need to focus on us, because we're not okay." Ron's blue eyes were pleading over the rim of the steaming mug he'd lifted to his lips and Arthur watched him take a sip of his tea in silence. "The war really messed us up and Hermione," Arthur didn't miss the light pink that stained his youngest son's cheeks, or the small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, "thinks we should get some space, so that we can figure it out and start putting ourselves back together."

Raising a brow, he reached for his own mug; a blue one from a Muggle shop, with the words "World's Best Dad" emblazoned in bright yellow on the side, and asked, "What about Harry?"

Ron frowned and tilted his head to the side slightly. "What about Harry? He's coming too – the git needs it the most, we reckon." Realisation seemed to suddenly dawn and he flushed a bright red. "It- It's not like that. We can't just cut Harry out of it – he's a part of it all. Hermione thinks we should focus on 'mending ourselves, before concentrating on a relationship'." He pulled a face, and then suddenly grinned. "Harry says that's a load of bollocks and we shouldn't waste any more time."

Resignation crept up on him and Arthur sighed heavily. "When are you planning on going?"

"A few days after my birthday; if we go before that, Mum'll have my head." They shared a knowing smile and the older man nodded, leaning back in his chair and scratching the back of his balding head.

"Alright, leave your mother to me." Ron nodded enthusiastically and rose to his feet so he could place the now-empty mugs in the sink, clapping his father on the shoulder as he passed on his way out the door.

-xoxo-

There had been a lot of arguments over the following weeks, Molly upset with not only her son, but also Arthur for supporting the trio's decision and barely spoke to any of them. Thing's had only gotten worse when Ron informed them that the move would most likely be permanent and that they might not be in contact for a while, because they had to relearn how to interact with people without freaking out whilst in a big group and hadn't been able to understand why that made her so panicked.

"It's not like you won't know where we are." He'd said, rolling his eyes and bending to pick up a small pile of clothes that had been on the floor. Much to his parents' shock, he'd deftly folded them without a second thought and shoved them into an open bag, stepping out of the way so Harry could pull a small pouch out from underneath the bed with his foot, the two sharing a quick grin as he did so. "Besides, we'll be back before you know it." Molly had given a teary huff and stalked out of the room, not quite slamming the door behind her and leaving a confused Ron staring at where she'd been standing. With a shake of his head Arthur had followed his wife down to the kitchen and leaving the two teenagers murmuring between themselves and sorting through clothes.

-xoxo-

After agreeing to be the one to make sure that they were properly settled in, Arthur went with them on the day they officially moved in. There wasn't much to do, seeing as the house already had furniture and all they'd had to move was their trunks full of personal items and their clothes.

The first thing he noticed about Grimmauld Place was that it was not the same house it had been three years previously. That became obvious the moment Arthur stepped through the front door and was greeted with a brighter, less intimidating hallway than he remembered, the walls no longer dark green, instead a deep, warm red; a product of Hermione's charm work, judging by the "Redcurrant Glory" she informed him with when she appeared behind them and the piece of shiny 'paper' (Arthur knew that that's what Muggles used instead of parchment – he'd taken Muggle Studies at Hogwarts) covered in tiny coloured squares clutched in one hand.

The changes had only continued as they moved through the house, each and every room proving to be cleaner than Arthur had ever seen them, the dust and grime replaced with shiny wooden surfaces, and glinting metal ornaments on the walls. Even Mrs Black's portrait was nowhere to be seen or heard. When he mentioned this, his son merely chuckled and shook his head ruefully.

"That has nothing to do with us. Kreacher's the one who's kept this place clean for the past year." He knew, of course, that they had been here for some time after Bill's wedding; could remember Remus arriving at The Burrow, flustered and angry, and maybe a bit ashamed, informing them that the kids were in the safest place they could be.

"Which is what I don't understand. The last time we were here, Kreacher did everything to reverse the progress made, why's it so different now?" He glanced at the house-elf who was carrying a tray of dirty teacups towards the other end of the kitchen, noticing the gleaming gold locket resting against the elf's chest. He turned back in time to see Ron direct a bitter smile at the table, a haunted look flashing in his eyes before vanishing as quickly as it had arrived. Long fingers drummed on the wooden surface and the younger Weasley huffed out a breath before speaking.

"Let's just say it was a gift from his old Master." Arthur didn't miss the slight emphasis on 'his' and smiled to himself. Before he could say anything more, there was a loud creak from behind them and a large pot fell to the floor with an echoing clang. Harry made to get out of his chair and pick the pot up, but Ron beat him to it, spinning on his chair and raising his wand. "Don't worry, mate, I've got it. Wingardium Leviosa." He barely managed to get the words out over the laugh threatening to break out. Next to him Harry snorted, and that was enough to make them both dissolve into what was bordering on giggles.

Hermione looked up from the book she'd been reading and smiled in amusement at the two laughing boys, shaking her head with a look of affection directed at their bent heads. Kreacher appeared at her elbow, muttering something to her so quietly Arthur couldn't hear him, and she nodded before following the small elf to the other end of the room and levitating a small stool over behind her. Once Harry calmed himself down, he made his way over to them, stepping out of the way as Kreacher pulled the stool so it was flush against the cupboards, clambering up so he could reach the countertop.

"They made him promise to let them help make dinner every now and then." Ron commented, noticing the confused look his father was giving them.

"And Kreacher agreed?" It would have been strange for any house-elf to agree, but especially so for that particular one, considering how it'd acted when the house was used as the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix.

"Well… Not exactly. He has to do all of the washing up and clean every room in the building. He made them swear on it before he'd even think about letting them help." He smiled again and Arthur couldn't help noticing just how relaxed he was. Without being constantly surrounded by people, Ron's body language had changed drastically; gone were the rigged shoulders and the unnatural quietness, instead replaced with a young man who was completely at ease in his surroundings, and who, despite still being quieter than he had been, laughed and joked freely. It made Arthur feel incredibly old, the realisation that his second youngest child was no longer that; a child. Ron had been an adult living in an adolescent's body since the age of twelve, but it hadn't been until after the war that Arthur had fully realised it.

"Why this house?" He heard himself ask, registering the shocked look he was given in return, a look that seemed to say "Why not this house?".

"Well, it's legally Harry's anyway; Sirius left it to him, although I something tells me that living in it wasn't what he had in mind." The grin he offered Arthur was tinged with sadness and the older man felt a pang of sympathy go out to his son. Ron had loved Sirius too; had cared about him and worried about him whilst they were at Hogwarts and the ex-convict had been on the run. When Sirius died, Harry wasn't the only one who'd lost someone, even though his loss was the most obvious and heartbreaking. "Besides, he needs to be here, I think. Some of his happiest memories are here, and he'll need them to get better."

"What about you? What do you need to get better?" It was an important question, and Arthur was willing to move mountains, if that's what he had to do; anything to help his child get onto the road to recovery. Ron merely looked at his two best friends, busy arguing over who was going to peel the carrots, Kreacher in between, ready to intervene if things got too out of hand for his liking, and nodded in their direction.

"Them, Dad. I need them."


	3. Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ron had many nightmares during his childhood, and his older brother Bill was always the one to comfort him. Over ten years later, it's Ron's turn to look after the oldest Weasley child.

December 1986

.

As the oldest of seven siblings, Bill Weasley had always prided himself on being an excellent big brother. An assumption that was not misguided either; when Charlie had been a baby, he used to get into the cot with him and hug him until he stopped crying because he wasn't big enough to do anything else, he'd taught Percy how to tie his shoe laces, and he had been almost single-handedly responsible for teaching Fred and George how to walk (not that his mother would classify that as being helpful, exactly, but he counted it as an achievement anyway). When it came to the two youngest member of the family, however, there was often a feeling of regret, because by the time they were old enough to do anything other than eat, sleep or need a nappy change, Bill had been at Hogwarts. Being so much older than them could be incredibly disconcerting at times; he'd been gone for such long periods of time during the school year that every time he went home, they were completely different people.

This was especially true for Ron, who as a toddler had been afraid of almost everything (something Bill suspected the twins were at least partially responsible for, what with their love of pranks and using him as a test subject for their experiments). And yet, despite that, every time he went home for the holidays, his baby brother had conquered another fear, a big, mostly toothless grin lighting up his face whenever he did something for the first time. It was because of this, and because he missed so many important moments early on, that Bill had made it his duty to give the younger redhead lots of attention when at The Burrow. He wasn't stupid; he'd seen during his earlier years that Ron was often the most overlooked child. Not because he wasn't loved, but because he was the youngest boy. Bill and Charlie were at Hogwarts, Percy, even at the age of nine was clearly planning on going somewhere in life, and Bill really wouldn't have been surprised if he'd ended up in Slytherin instead of Gryffindor, and he constantly asked questions about the world around him, because knowing things made the world easier to deal with (or something, he'd stopped paying attention after five minutes of his brother's ramblings). Fred and George were always up to something, whether it was figuring out how to steal Percy's glasses without him noticing, or how to rig a dungbomb on top of the kitchen door without getting themselves caught in the mess, and Ginny was the only girl, so she got all of the attention from their doting mother because she was the 'miracle' child. Bill loved his sister, he did, but she was not something that he would voluntarily call anything other than a pain in the arse. But Ron was usually the most ignored child because he wasn't a troublemaker, he didn't have any ambitions of becoming the Minister and all he really wanted to do was play Quidditch and eat.

When he'd been eleven years old, and on the brink of going to school, he and Charlie had made a promise late one night when they should have been sleeping, to make sure that their littlest brother always knew that they loved him. They hadn't said it in those exact words, because in Charlie's opinion, telling someone that you loved them was "girly and something that only Ginny does", but the basis had been the same. As the years passed, Bill often regretted being quite so caring towards the youngest Weasley boy. Not because he didn't care, but because Ron had a habit of coming to him for comfort after a nightmare, of which he had a lot, and they always seemed to be about spiders.

There is a particular night that he's always remembered with perfect clarity, although it wasn't all that different from any other time Ron had ended up in his bed and holding onto him for dear life, his eyes screwed shut in fear and sweat covering his entire body. But it is this, and comments made by Harry and Hermione that make him wonder if maybe his baby brother is a tiny bit psychic, or if there's some Seer blood in their family somewhere down the line.

-xoxo-

It was the Christmas holidays of his fifth year, a Thursday, and it was very late at night, or in the morning, depending on the way that he looked at it. He'd still been awake, although the light was off, and he'd been staring at the ceiling, listening to Charlie's light, snuffling snores from across the room, thinking about a conversation he'd had with his parents earlier in the day regarding his future and the N.E. he was going to take. Telling them that he wanted to be a curse breaker hadn't exactly gone well, and his mum was in a mood with him, sniffing angrily whenever he so much as blinked in her presence. It was as he punched his pillows into a more comfortable position that he heard the soft pitter-patter of small feet crossing bare floorboards, and he stifled a sigh as the door quietly creaked open, Ron's head peeking around the frame hesitantly. When he saw the look on Bill's face he went to pull back out onto the landing, intending to go to Percy instead, but his brother's voice stopped him from moving.

"What's wrong, Ronnie?" The six year old pulled a face at the nickname, but pushed the door open to reveal the rest of him. Even as a kid, Ron had been tall; he'd reached their dad's knees by the time he was seven. His Chudley Cannon pyjamas, a birthday present from earlier in the year, were glaringly bright, even in the dark, were a little bit short in both the arm and the leg, proof of just how quickly he grew, and he had a sad-looking toy dragon named Levi (because he couldn't pronounce Leviathan - a name that Charlie had given it when it had been brand new), who was missing an eye and whose wings were lopsided, stuffed under one arm.

"I had a bad dream." The response almost made Bill smile; it was the same answer every time. Ron closed the door and shuffled further into the room, not quite getting to the end of the bed and giving the older boy a pleading look as he leant forward and whispered, "It was about spiders."

"Why'd you dream about them?" He asked, pretending that it was something unusual, because Ron hated anyone treating his fear like it was normal. He later said that it made him feel like he was being made fun of, even if that wasn't what had been meant.

"George put a spider in the chess box so I couldn't get it out." The little boy frowned deeply, his lower lip sticking out slightly in his unhappiness. "He did it on purpose, 'cause he knew me and Dad were gonna play after dinner. I hate him."

Bill sighed and shifted on the bed so there was space next to him, lifting an arm up and raising a brow. "No you don't, you just think you do." He almost laughed at the petulant "Same thing." that left Ron's mouth and instead cocked his head to the side. "Are you getting in or not?"

"I'm getting in!" Seeming to think that the offer would be rescinded if he took too long, the longer boy hurried to the edge of the bed, throwing Levi on to the mattress and clambering up after him, immediately snuggling into Bill's open arms, his messy red hair tucked underneath his brother's chin.

"So, what exactly happened in this dream of yours?" He reached down to pull the duvet up and huffed in exasperation when it was just below his fingertips.

"There were loads of trees and me and two other kids were running away from a bunch of big spiders." The look on Bill's face must have been unimpressed because Ron hastened to add that, "They were bigger than the car in Dad's shed!"

Internally frowning, Bill absently stroked the nest of red hair on his shoulder. They sounded like Acromantula, although Ron shouldn't have known about, because as far as he knew, no one had told him that they existed. "Okay, what else?"

"Well, the girl disappeared, but I don't think the spiders got her. Me and the boy ran for ages, but we were still in the trees, and then one of the spiders started talking to us." He shivered, burying his head into the crook of Bill's neck and the Weasley smiled at the wooden beam directly above his head. Ron's over active imagination was notorious in their family, and this was an example of why.

"What did it say?"

"'Goodbye'. That's when I woke up." Bill tightened the arm around Ron's shoulders and pressed a kiss to the top of his head, knowing that come the morning, he would be holding onto feet instead of a torso, and there would be toes digging into his shoulder.

"Well, they're gone now. They won't come back, either. Not while I'm here, so go to sleep." Beside him, Ron's body relaxed, the grip the six year old had had on his tatty t-shirt slowly slackening and his breathing became even.

-xoxo-

April 1998

.

Despite being the youngest of six brothers, who had shied away from comforting his older siblings in their moments of weakness, lest they never let him live it down, Ron Weasley was shockingly familiar with the sounds of someone having a nightmare. It was the shout that came from the room across the hall, the one that Bill and Fleur shared, that woke him from his slumber, his best friend stirring slightly next him.

"Was that Bill?" Harry breathed, pushing the duvet off of his legs and lowering one of his feet to the floor. Ron gave a nod of his head and quickly got to his feet, his toes scrunching against the cold floorboards in protest and he reached out to grab his friend's wrist before he could open the door.

"I'll go. See if Hermione's okay, will you?" Ron asked, not waiting for conformation but seeing Harry agree anyway. The two boys left the room, Harry heading down the hallway towards Hermione and Luna's room and Ron taking the few steps towards his brother's room.

With a quiet tap on the wooden door, Ron pushed the handle down and eased it open, poking his head through the gap. Bill was lying on his bed, the sheets balled down around his knees, his face pale and soaked with sweat. One side of the bed was still relatively intact. Fleur had gone to visit her parents for the weekend, so she could celebrate her sister's birthday, and had Apparated straight there in order to avoid any trouble.

"Bill?" Ron asked in a whisper, edging into the room and letting the door slide shut behind him with a low thud.

The only response was a sharp inhale of breath and then a few jerky coughs. Blue eyes blinked open slowly, still groggy with sleep and the older Weasley lifted his weight onto his elbows so he could look at his brother. "Ron, that you? What's wrong?"

Ron almost smiled at that, regardless of the reason he was there. Of course Bill was more concerned about him and ignoring the obvious problem at hand. "Nothing, I'm fine. I heard you shouting, though. Are you okay?"

Bill flopped back down onto the bed, a hand rubbing over his face slowly as he sighed. "I'm alright. S'nothing to worry about. Go back to bed."

"Can't be nothing, if you're having bad dreams about it." The taller redhead muttered, approaching the tidier side of the bed cautiously and lowering himself onto the navy blankets, gazing out of the slightly ajar curtains at the cloudy sky outside as he waited for an answer, just able to make out the full moon behind one of the darkest clouds.

"Yeah, well, it is, so just drop it, yeah?" Bill turned his back towards his brother, punching his pillows as he rearranged his body.

"You dreamt of the battle, right?" Ron guessed, glancing at the older man's shoulder blades and picking some dirt out from underneath his thumbnail.

Rolling over to face him again, Bill frowned heavily, his right hand reaching up to scratch absently at one of the scars on his cheek. "How the ruddy hell did you know that?"

The eighteen year old shrugged and he flashed a grim smile in Bill's direction. "Lucky guess. The bad things have a habit of staying with you."

"And how would you know about 'the bad things'?"

"You don't want to know." A suspicious glare was aimed at him and he held his hands up. "My best friend's Harry Potter." He pointed out, as if it explained everything, his lips twitching when Bill nodded slowly. "What did you dream about?"

Bill's face immediately lost all emotion and he stared at one of the bedroom walls. "It was just a dream, right? It's in the past, so let's leave it there."

Blowing out a breath from between pursed lips, Ron laid down so his head was next to his brother's shoulder. "I want to help."

Bill snorted derisively and placed a hand on Ron's head gently. "Nothing can help, Ronnie. It's a thing that happened and nobody can do anything about it."

"You used to make me talk about my nightmares all the time!" He protested, tilting his head back so he could look the other man in the eye.

"That was different! You used to have nightmares about spiders, for Merlin's sake!" Ron flinched and before Bill could apologise, his younger brother was defending himself.

"We've all got things that scare us, you prat! So, what? Your nightmares mean more just because they're about something worse than a poxy spider? If we're going there then I think I've seen worse!"

"Okay! I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean it like that, it's just that I forget how much you hate them sometimes." Ron settled down again, his head mere inches from Bill's shoulder, some of the longer strands to tickle his arm.

"You'd hate them too, if you'd come face to face with an Acromantula." Ron muttered so quietly, Bill wasn't sure he'd heard properly.

Knowing that he wouldn't be left in peace until he'd answered the question, he sighed and rolled his shoulders back into the mattress, speaking to the ceiling. "It was Greyback. When he bit me. We'd been trying to push some of the Death Eaters back; there were a group of second years stuck in a classroom and we'd been trying to get them out safely, when there was this sudden crash, and then that bastard was there. There wasn't much time between him standing there and biting me, the last thing I really remember is that everything hurt and the world was starting to go dark."

"Bloody hell." Ron breathed, reaching out to tap reassuringly on his brother's hip, as it was the only part he could reach without it becoming painful. "That's what happened?"

"That's what I remember." Bill corrected with a sardonic smile. "That doesn't mean that it was exactly like I think it was."

"Shit. You dreamt that?" Ron asked. "No wonder you had a nightmare."

After a few minutes of silence, Bill spoke again. "It's not usually this bad." He admitted around a yawn, pulling the duvet up from around his knees so that it rested just above his waist.

"Why? 'Cause you have Fleur to make you feel better?" Ron teased, laughing when a large hand hit him around the size of his head.

"Shut up, brat. It's not just her; it's knowing that there's someone else there and that I'm not alone that makes them not so bad." Before Ron could say anything about him becoming a soppy git, Bill had clapped a hand over his mouth. "Not a word."

"I wasn't going to say anything!" Ron's voice was muffled and he couldn't breathe properly, so, in order to get free, he licked Bill's palm, shrinking away when Bill's immediate reaction was to wipe it on his hair.

"I'm sure." Bill grinned. "Go to sleep."

"Don't worry, Billy; I'm here to protect you."

"Piss off."

-xoxo-

Harry poked his head into Bill's bedroom after knocking softly on the wooden door, grinning to himself when he saw that the two Weasleys' were fast asleep, laying side by side on the bed. Ron's head was at the wrong end of the bed, next to Bill's feet and the toes of his left foot poking his brother in the neck. As he stood there, Bill's leg twitched, his knee lifting to dig into Ron's rib cage, causing the younger of the two to move away, almost rolling off the bed as he did so.

From down the corridor he could hear the sounds of Hermione or Luna moving around. Hermione had been fine, but he still wanted to double check that nothing had happened after he'd gone back to bed, so he withdrew from the room, padding down the hall until he was standing outside the girls' room, the smile from seeing his best friend's position still on his face as he lifted a fist to knock on the door.


	4. Contagious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ron wonders if cowardice is contagious. Percy wonders if bravery is.

June 1998

It may come as a surprise to some, but Ron is the first out of the Weasley clan to notice that something about the third oldest child has changed. Gone are the days of Percy bossing his siblings around with the air of intellectual superiority, and the muttered “I saw that George, and if you don’t do as I say, I’ll tell Mum”. Instead he’s replaced with a shell of the man he could have been, if he wasn’t such a stubborn prat; silent and guilty, eternally blaming himself for Fred’s death and the idea of what if. Ron looks at the hunched figure of his brother who tries to hide in the shadows and can’t help but want the old one back. At least he knew how to deal with that one – a few choice swear words, slamming doors in each other’s faces and a few days of ignoring each other used to do the trick, but now he doesn’t even know where to begin.  
When he has a chance to think about it, he asks himself if the reason he sees it before the others is because he knows what it’s like to be a coward. He knows what it feels like to run away from the people who need him most when things are at their worst, and so he recognises the signs of intense guilt and the loneliness of being trapped in your own cowardice. He never says anything about how he feels because he knows what Harry and Hermione would say (“You came back! You saved my life!” “It wasn’t you. It was that blasted Horcrux!”), but he accepts the fact that he’ll be spending the rest of his life trying to make it up to the two most important people in his life, even if they don’t know he’s doing it. By the way Percy acts around the family, he gets the distinct impression that he’s not the only one who’ll be repenting for their desertion. As much as he wants to hate his brother for the things that he said and did, he can’t. He knows he’s an idiot most of the time, but he’s not a hypocrite.  
Ron wonders sometimes if abandoning your family is contagious. It was Percy, after all, who he was closest to as a child, before Hogwarts and Harry and Hermione and trying to figure out how to save the world without dying.

-xoxo-

He spends more time with his family now than he has in years, trying to make up for a ten month absence (that he insists wasn’t his fault, but his mother won’t have it), and it’s slowly reminding him of why Percy was his favourite brother once upon a time. Percy is still witty and sarcastic, and now Ron knows where he got his sense of humour from, and underneath it all Percy hasn’t really changed all that much. Ron understands that it’s going to take some time, but eventually the others will realise that he’s still their brother, too.  
The irony isn’t lost on him; that the person who Percy owes possibly the biggest apology to, aside from their parents of course, for the way he treated Harry over the past few years is the first to forgive him. But maybe that’s because he was there. He watched Fred die, and maybe that healed whatever rift there had been before it happened, because he doesn’t hate him anymore.

He knows the others will come around eventually. That George will stop stalking out of the room whenever Percy sits down, that Charlie will stop glaring at the back of his head and muttering about feeding him to Norberta, and that Ginny will stop going out of her way to be as irritating as possible. Because as angry as they might be with Percy right now, nobody can possibly hate him as much as he hates himself. On the day that they’d buried Fred, Ron had heard the older man confess to the gravestone that marked his brother’s resting place that he wished it had been him that the wall had hit. He’d whispered through his tears how everyone would be better off if it had been him that had died. It was survivor’s guilt, Ron had realised when telling his two best friend’s what he’d heard. An old, unwelcome friend that the red head knew well enough after all the things he’d been through.

-xoxo-

On the day that George cracks a smile at something Percy says, the first smile they’ve seen from him since his twin died, their mother cries and pulls both of them into a hug. Ron, from where he directs his worn chess pieces across the board, sees the two grip each other’s hands behind Molly’s back and he smiles as he tells one of his pawns to take Bill’s rook.

-xoxo-

February 1998

Percy’s heard all about how his family are a bunch of blood traitors who all deserve to die. Much like the filthy Mudbloods they love so much, he’s told. He’s forced to listen, daily, to the people he works with spread nasty rumours about his parents and make crude remarks about his siblings and he does so with a straight face. He’s angry about it though. All the time. There’s not a moment between him stepping into the Ministry of Magic and leaving it where he doesn’t envisage himself turning Thicknesse, the self-righteous prat, into the ugliest animal he can imagine.

He can remember the exact moment he knew he had to get out of the Ministry. It was the day Ron, Potter and Granger had broken in and assaulted Umbridge, the overgrown toad. He’d watched his youngest brother sprint past him, chased by Yaxley and a group of Death Eaters, and felt his heart stop as green came out of Yaxley’s wand. Before he’d had time to think about what he’d been doing, during the confusion that the chase had caused, he’d tripped some of his brother’s pursuers in the hopes that the three friends would get away.

From that point onwards he’s spent every waking moment dedicated to passing vital information onto the Order. He knows the risk, every time he slides a piece of parchment containing whatever information he’s been able to overhear across Kingsley Shacklebolt’s desk. Sometimes he wants to run. Every day it gets harder to go back into his prison, because the more he plays spy, the higher the risk is of him getting caught. It’s time like this where he takes the crumpled, water marked photograph out of his desk draw and runs his fingers across the mottled image of his family. Ron’s always the one that looks the least angry and Percy takes comfort in that. He wonders if bravery is contagious. He’s never thought of himself as particularly courageous, but maybe Ron passed some of his on when he broke into the Ministry. It’s what keeps Percy walking past that bloody statue every morning; the idea that he’s Ron’s brother and therefore has to set an example, even if the brother in question can’t see it.

Percy has always been envious of Ron’s courage and his ability to face anything life throws at him with a joke on his tongue and a smile on his lips. He promises himself that one day he’ll show Ron just how much he appreciates what his younger brother’s done for him.


End file.
